Doughpuppet: The Doughpuppeting
Today, in an exciting exchange with a ‘reader,’ Jonah Goldberg offers compelling evidence of a liberal fascist plot to strengthen corporate power. This despite the best efforts of conservative Cassandras like Our Loady of Guadoughlupe to warn labor against the perils of unchecked capitalism.
As seems to be happening with increasing frequency, an unnamed correspondent e-mails Jonah with mixed praise for ‘Liberal Fascism’, all the better for D-Load to later clarify how the criticism reinforces his point.
Let me preface this comment by noting that I have not read your book and therefore may have missed part of your argument. I do, however, disagree with your contention that the left is entirely to blame for statist corporatism. … The corporatism of the left tends to be filtered through the rhetoric of social justice, but this is a difference in emphasis, not policy.
Well, of course the left isn’t entirely to blame for corporatism, D-Load replies:
I pretty much agree entirely. To say that the Democrats have prostituted themselves to corporatism should not in any way be interpreted as me saying that there aren’t plenty of whores in the GOP’s saloon.
How could anybody possibly think he meant anything different when he wrote that ‘big business in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and New Deal America was not right-wing; it was left-wing, and it was fascistic’?????
And while no true Scotsman conservative is for corporate welfare (unlike those socialist CEO-lovers), it was Jonah’s argument from the beginning, don’t you know, that Tom DeLay and Dennis Kucinich are peas in a pod when it comes to funneling prole-generated wealth to big business:
But, I agree that even today, politicians across the political spectrum favor corporatist policies. Would that the GOP was actually the conservative party when it came to, say, agricultural subsidies. Let me just concede the point that both parties have corporatist operational majorities.
And let me just concede the point that, WTF? In Jonah’s world, does any arrangement of consecutively written words ever have even a fleeting time frame in which they can be conclusively understood to mean a specific thing?
Halliburton: a liberal plot, with chief liberal Cheney pulling the strings.
(Hey, this is kinda fun!)
Goldberg is trying to redefine everything in the public lexicon. “Corporatist leftists,” Ha! He’s reaching too high for his abilities, and it will backfire on him.
I guess to Goldberg, evidence of an employee cafeteria or a gymnasium, or a dormitory, is proof of left wing politics. Whatever happened to the re-distribution of income? Isn’t that a characteristic of the Left? Didn’t see much of that in Italy, Germany, or those other countries that he throws around.
Or is he saying the DLC is ‘the left’ in this country? I actually think the Pantload is well past the point where even he understands what the hell point he’s trying to make. That he’s really just riding out the string, trying to sell books to 27 percenters and muddying the waters with enough meandering argumentativeness that no big name can hand him a major public beating for writing it before everybody forgets it even exists.
In Jonah’s world, does any arrangement of consecutively written words ever have even a fleeting time frame in which they can be conclusively understood to mean a specific thing?
No.
Goldberg is the dog that thinks it’s a person (as has been said many times). Teh Pantload honestly thinks he’s engaged in a serious political discussion prompted by his serious, carefully written book, when, in fact, he’s just yapping senselessly over a particularly sizable pile of poo.
I invited my CEO to the monthly meeting of the Socialist Youth, but he said that he had to man the barricades against the police in front of the Revolutionary Workers Alliance’s club house and couldn’t make it until next month,
Fascist!!
Is it me or is Lucianne’s Pantyload starting to sound like a caricature of a radical hippie?
The man controls everything, man. The man is in the government, man. The man is in your toilet paper, man.
Maybe he’ll set up housekeeping with Camille Paglia and Ward Churchill.
I’m tellin’ ya, it’s the Goldberg Uncertainty Principle. He’ll redefine anything based on whatever criticism (good or bad) he receives, so long as it “reinforces his point” and makes him “win”. Think of Liberal Fascism as the box which holds Schroedinger’s Cat.
“Or is he saying the DLC is ‘the left’ in this country?”
That’s exactly it. To these simple minded buffoons, Democrat=leftist, which is a profoundly stupid idea.
Jonah is going to wind up as the Uriah Heep (the band) of journalism. Can a mocumentary be far behind? Too bad the title ‘Break Like The Wind’ has already been taken.
So Jonah’s stupidity meter goes up to 11??
The World: Jonah, you are absolutely wrong.
Jonah: I totally agree, and this proves my point.
Ugh!
I suggest ‘Doughpuppetening’.
The extra ‘en’ always makes it funnier.
Going by his logic, I would assume that Pantload would concede that the proportion of corporate whores that are GOP is about the same as the proportion of non-homosexuals that were Nazis, no?
# of Nazi Homosexuals Number of GOP corporate whores———————————- = ———————————————–
# of Nazis # of Corporate Whores
damn… didn’t format the way i’d hoped…
So Jonah’s stupidity meter goes up to 11??
Yup. Custom made just for him. And his next book will be titled ‘Shark Sandwich’. Imagine the reviews…
I actually think the Pantload is well past the point where even he understands what the hell point he’s trying to make.
He writes like he is stoned out of his mind. You know, the pseudo-intellectual pothead, the one who thinks he is really profound because he constructs long elaborate arguments that stagger aimlessly from self-contradiction to missing point to loud insistent repetition of words that are meaningless when strung together.
There he sits, orange stains on his shirt and chin, forgotten cheeto held aloft his his grubby fingers, and you sit there and wait and hope he passes out soon.
And while no true conservative is for corporate welfare
This is true.
Wrong. In the fall of 2001 all WingNut StupidityMeters recalibrated to go up to 911.
Get with it people, Liberal Fascist Corporatists have been planting tiny transmitters in dental fillings for decades and…..wait a minute……sorry, gotta go, incoming transmission.
Far be it from me to extract, like, meaning from the pantload; but did he just agree that a majority of today’s GOP are fascists? I think he’s reaching his goal–the term is completely meaningless in the doughboy world.
Seriously, Our Loady of Guadoughlupe?
That was fucking ace! The dormant part of my recovering Catholic psyche recoiled at the sacrilege, and I don’t rule out it was her that smote me by making hot coffee come out of my nose and unto my keyboard and screen…
In the fall of 2001 all WingNut StupidityMeters recalibrated to go up to 911.
Yes.
Think of Liberal Fascism as the litter box which holds Schroedinger’s Cat‘s soiled litter.
Fixed that for you.
Actually, the indeterminate state of the litter is a pretty good metaphor for Jonah’s style of argumentation.
Jonah Goldberg offers compelling evidence of a liberal fascist plot to strengthen corporate power.
I’m sorry, but when did the left privatize an industry? When did the left outsource wars to Halliburton and Blackwater with no accountability?
HA HA.
Goldberg’s slow mind:
I’m almost done working through Tim Noah’s review
Noah’s review is fewer than 1500 words. No wonder he was blegging to get people to read Spencer for him…
Jonah:
Going back to the 19th century GOP, however, isn’t really fruitful since the GOP was a very different party back then.
However, going back to 1919 with the Democrats, is WAY WAY WAY fruitful. For proving they are fascists today.
“Our Loady of Guadoughlupe” is right up there with Thers’ blender analogy. If I had any innertubz skills at all, I’d link it, but y’all know the Whiskeyfire blender/toaster metaphor.
This is of the same family of “proven points” that idiots use when they declare Democrats are racists because of several state policies of the 40s and 50s (and earlier), while a continuous loop chant of “Lincoln was a Republican” plays in the background.
When you tell them of the origin of “Southern Democrats”, you get a blank stare followed 30 seconds later by high-pitched squeals and bellows of “I’m Right! I’m Right! I’M RIGHT!!! EEEEEEE!”
A detail that continues to elude them.
One more and I’ll stop.
Perhaps the most irritating out of all the many, many irritating idiocies in the book is this claim:
Goldberg: “I think you can tell when a program or initiative is fascist by the motivating spirit behind it. If there’s a utopian impulse, if a ‘new age’ or ‘new politics’ are being promised, if the government is promising to create a kingdom of heaven on earth or ‘end’ some basic feature of the human condition, then that policy is leaping out of the realm of problem-solving and into the realm of religion.”
Whereas the right (in Jonah’s definition) is limited to a single, defining characteristic:
If you understand the right-wing or conservative
position to be that of those who argue for free markets, competition,
property rights, and the other political values inscribed in the
original intent
What do they (the American right) use as evidence that an unfettered market should tower above all institutions? That the invisible hand will create a fucking utopia, the best of all possible worlds: Brooks’s magical candy mountain so aptly described in these pages last week. So doesn’t that make “free” market champions fascist?
And then there’s this reversal:
Democrats want to “rein in” corporations, while
Republicans claim to be “pro-business.” The problem is that being
“pro-business” is hardly the same thing as being pro–free market,
while “reining in” corporations breeds precisely the climate liberals
decry as fascistic.
If you understand the right-wing or conservative
position to be that of those who argue for free markets, competition,
property rights, and the other political values* inscribed in the
original intent of the American founding fathers, then big business in
Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and New Deal America was not rightwing;
it was left-wing, and it was fascistic. What’s more, it still is.
So Republicans are left-wing and fascistic? And still are?
And so Jonah’s defined the right-wing down to nobody but Frei Markt Ueber Alles libertarians, and I’ve proved (all with Jonah’s words, so I should definitely write “proved”) that they are fascist due to their Utopian impulses, then maybe he’s right that we’re all fascists now?
*Ignore for the moment, this elision and/or laziness.
Jonah’s response to Noah’s review is just as juvenile, insulting and incoherent as all his other responses.
“The tendentiousness of this will be evident to most people who’ve read my Wilson chapter. First of all, from what I can tell, the Federal Trade Commission doesn’t even appear in that chapter.”
“From what I can tell”? Didn’t he read his own chapter?
Link.
It’s so true, Socialists have always been known for their love of factory owners, bankers, and indeed all capitalists. Thank God for the Conservative drive for strong corporate regulation and strong unions, otherwise the Socialist Capitalists would have ground the workers into dust.
“To say that the Democrats have prostituted themselves to corporatism…”
This statement can only be true if you’ve shut your eyes, turned off the TV, cancelled all newspaper subscriptions, shoved Play-Dough in your ears, incased your head in a sound-proof box and held your breath for the past 80 years.
Central-planning free marketers are destroying America, tigrismus.One nationalizing privatization at a time.
Thar she blows! Moby Pantload surfaces again spewing logical fallacies from his blowhole. What liberals decry as fascist are those things that the actual fascists actually did. Regulating corporations isn’t fasicst. The Nazis liberated themselves and corporations from all restraints and laws, kind of like the Republicans are trying to do now.
Shorter Liberal Fascism: Liberals agree with everything they disagree with.
You’d still be better informed and more intelligent than Lucianne’s PantyLoad.
Shorter Liberal Fascism: Liberals agree with everything they disagree with.
Well, that kind of makes sense. Jonah’s a smart cookie, and he knows you can’t just judge people by what they claim to agree with; you have to judge them by their actions.
Except when Nazis say, “We’re socialists.” Then you have to take them at their word. Because, y’know, they’re Nazis. Or something.
“Our Loady of Guadoughlupe”
OK, this was funny.
Short of “I wrote this while choking on a Lil’ Debbie Cake wrapper” here’s telltale proof of sockpuppetry:
Let me preface this comment by noting that I have not read your book and therefore may have missed part of your argument.
Echt Goldberg. But how lazy do you have to be when even you’re imaginary correspondents don’t bother to read your book?
Let me preface this comment by noting that I have not read your book and therefore may have missed part of your argument.
even Jonah’s fans don’t see why they should read the book!